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Millionaire Fit for a Big Blonde

This evening while the Cute Gardener is cooking up his famous fried chicken, I’m sitting on the couch watching Stephen Colbert and slurping on a Millionaire. No, the CG hasn’t lent me out on some bizarre Indecent Proposal in his own house; I am merely channeling one of my favorite writers and biggest sardonic influences Dorothy Parker, who once said, “I hate almost all rich people although I’d be darling at it,” which I wholeheartedly agree with. You see, I have stumbled upon “Under The Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide” by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick who also happens to be the president of the Dorothy Parker Society and am immensely enjoying a drink from the book in her honor.

My Big Blonde Painting

When I was a weird little book girl in a Catholic school uniform I encountered Mrs. Parker and her Algonquin Round Table in the stacks of my public library. Imagine my glee over the fact that while wearing attire designed for me to religiously conform (blue plaid and white knee socks), I was also reading the lascivious literary social satire of a woman who loved to cocktail, chide the pretentious, and topple polite society with her on the dot wit. I loved her story Big Blonde about the boozy floozy who disturbs the otherwise perfect façades of upscale dinner party women but whose power is lost in her absolute need to be adored by men. So much so in fact that I made my best friend dress up as my version of that character complete with cigarette and Scotch glass to model for one of my earlier paintings. In my gimlet-eyed early attempts at short fiction I oftentimes had a dame in distress narrating her woes with a cocktail such as the heroine of the Five and Dime who drinks whiskey sours on her red-eye 3 AM “lunch” break in lieu of a sex life. Dorothy was one of those females who made me realize it was okay for a girl to walk into a room, be better friends with all the males than the females, and in her cutting one liners – completely one up everyone else regardless of class or circumstance. She was definitely a hero.